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Dessert

Creme Au Cafe. — Coffee Cream

A custard-like coffee cream made by boiling coffee, milk, and egg yolks, then setting in a bain-marie.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Creme Au Cafe. — Coffee Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee base

  1. Boil the coffee with the water for 4-5 times.

  2. Let it settle, then pour off the clear liquid.

  3. In a stewpan, combine the coffee with the milk and sweeten to taste.

  4. Boil until reduced to the desired amount.

Make the cream

  1. Beat the egg yolks with a little flour and some cream.

  2. Mix this with the coffee mixture and strain through a sieve into a dish.

  3. Place the dish in a stewpan of boiling water over low heat until the cream is set.

  4. Pass a moderately hot salamander over the cream and serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set the cream into a custard as they cook gently in the water bath.
Milk
Adds richness and body, softening the coffee's bitterness with its sweetness.
Coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour of the cream.
Flour
Stabilises the egg mixture so it sets smoothly rather than curdling.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Place the dish in a stewpan of boiling water over low heat until the cream is set.. Egg yolks thicken at gentle temperatures; too much heat makes them scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy custard instead of a smooth set cream.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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